


small time

by unwoundfloors



Category: Noir - Fandom
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwoundfloors/pseuds/unwoundfloors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It makes it melt away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	small time

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from 'Small Time Shot Away' by Massive Attack.

The job had gone wrong.

She flips the lightswitch on, and a sickly fluorescent-bulb glow floods the room, forcing its way into every corner. The air tastes cold and stale to Kirika. Mirielle still has not spoken, not a word since they'd managed to escape.

Deadly silent, she thinks, but then feels sick, as if she's choking on the words, abstract and clinical things they are. The gun at her hip means nothing to her - and the bloodstains on her hands and soul, the uncertainty and guilt weighing down her shoulders, they mean everything.

Is this how she's destined to live the rest of her days? she asks the silence. She is still standing in the doorway, blinking away the light, when Mirielle says quite simply that she doesn't want to know, moving ahead of her. Kirika's fine with that.

 

 

Mirielle is right, she remembers the strangest things. Hemingway quotes ("Even when I was in a crowd, I was always alone," she'd said once to her, and it had seemed oddly fitting), the curve of cool metal around her fingers and the precise measurements of a Beretta-45, the smell of watercolour paints, and Mirielle's sheets and pillows (peach shampoo, sweat and nightmares). What she will never understand: how the curve of a trigger can feel so familiar to her - nor the curve of a tense, prone body next to hers in bed, lit starkly under the moonlight streaming in through the window.

She keeps breathing, chokes back a sob.

 

 

Later, Mirielle will not surprise her in the sense that she leaves bruises on her hips, marking her territory everywhere, offering everything and confirming nothing. A warm mouth, sharp fingernails digging into her thighs - this feels vaguely familiar to Kirika, like most things have, lately. Mirielle gasps, but still will say nothing. The silence rings in Kirika's ears, almost harsher than the ricochet of gunfire. Even in such an intimate aspect of their relationship Mirielle will keep herself utterly closed-off. It is, again, no surprise.

 

 

She wakes up, all tangled up in white sheets and sunlight streaming in through the open window. She has to blink, it's so bright and she almost wants to cry with the strangeness of it all. But, she thinks, she is okay. The blood has soaked through the bandage wrapped around her shoulder, marking the sheets.

She turns over and sees Mirielle leaning out of the open windows, her blond hair catching the sunlight. She's watching the early morning traffic below in the streets, and Kirika can hear bells, now, from a nearby church, ringing sweetly through the house. It's a beautiful morning, she realises, getting out of bed and running her fingers through her hair. Mirelle turns around. She smiles rarely, but when she does, it makes Kirika feel she's not so totally alone in the world. "Morning," she says, quietly.

The night has not answered any of her questions, and she still doesn't understand anything, at all. Yet on a morning like this, when the night's ghosts seem so far away, driven back by sunlight, it's difficult to believe that she will never find the answers she's looking for.

 

 

(Faith, she thinks. Maybe it is a matter of faith.)


End file.
